backup with rsync (permissions)

I'm running ISPConfig on Fedora Core 5.
I have another Fedora installation which I will use for backup.

In ISPConfig all dirs under /var/www is owned by web1/2/3....

I connect to the ISPConfig server with the user "john". But "john" hasn't access to the /var/www folders. I get the message: "rsync: opendir "/var/www/web1/ftp/incoming" failed: Permission denied (13)" on all dirs.